Apple gives you a hidden, 100-character keyword field in App Store Connect, and most listings we audit waste a third of it before they’ve written a single useful word. Not through laziness. Through habits that made sense with a different algorithm, years ago.
The keyword field is the one part of your metadata users never see. It exists purely for indexing. That makes it the highest-leverage 100 characters in ASO, and also the easiest to waste, because there’s no visual feedback telling you it’s wrong. A bad screenshot gets noticed. A bad keyword field just quietly under-performs for a year.
Every character you spend repeating a word Apple already indexed elsewhere is a character you didn’t spend discovering a new one.
The Three Ways Teams Waste It
1. Repeating words from the title and subtitle
Apple indexes your app name, subtitle, and keyword field together. If “budget” is already in your title, typing “budget” again in the keyword field adds nothing, since Apple already has it. Yet it’s one of the most common patterns we see, because it feels safe. It isn’t wasteful in the sense of hurting you, but every repeated word is 6-10 characters that could have surfaced a keyword you don’t currently rank for at all.
2. Writing it like a sentence
Spaces cost characters. Commas separate terms just as well and Apple’s own documentation recommends them. Compare:
budget tracker for couples and families: 40 charactersbudget,tracker,couples,families,expense,split: 47 characters, but six distinct terms instead of four, and no wasted connector words like “for” and “and”
Skip the space after each comma too. Apple’s indexing doesn’t need it, and it’s free real estate.
3. Including both singular and plural forms
Apple’s search algorithm handles basic pluralization and word stemming on its own in most (though not all) cases. Keeping both “tracker” and “trackers” in the field is usually redundant. It’s not always 100% safe to assume stemming will catch every variant (test with App Store Connect search or a keyword tool before you drop one), but for common English plurals, you’re very likely paying twice for one word.
What to Do With the Characters You Just Freed Up
Once you strip the redundancy, most listings recover 15-25 usable characters. Put them toward:
- Competitor and category terms you don’t currently rank for. Check your current keyword rankings first, then target adjacent terms, not ones you already own.
- Use-case language your title doesn’t cover. If your title says “Budget Tracker,” the field is where “shared expenses,” “split bills,” or “spending alerts” earn their keep.
- Misspellings and regional variants, but only if search data actually supports them. Don’t guess, check what people are searching first.
A Quick Audit You Can Run Today
Pull up your current keyword field and your title/subtitle side by side. Highlight every word in the field that also appears in the title or subtitle. If more than 20% of your field is highlighted, you have room to improve without touching a single screenshot or a line of your description.
Once your keyword field itself is clean, a few things compound the gain: a broader keyword research methodology to keep it fed with fresh candidates, long-tail phrases that convert well with less competition, and deciding which languages to localize first, since every additional locale gets its own 100-character field to fill well, not just translate.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the maximum length of Apple’s keyword field?
100 characters, shared across every keyword you want to target for that localization. Commas and spaces count against the limit, which is why trimming filler words matters.
Should I repeat words from my app title or subtitle in the keyword field?
No. The App Store already indexes your title and subtitle for search, so repeating those words in the keyword field wastes characters that could target keywords found nowhere else in your metadata.
Does the keyword field apply to Google Play too?
No. Google Play doesn’t have a dedicated keyword field; ranking there is driven by keyword usage within the visible title, short description, and full description instead.
Want a second pair of eyes on your metadata? At ASO Hype, we run a full keyword field audit as part of every review, and it’s usually the fastest win we find. Let’s talk →